


Northern Star

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9167155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: Huey thinks on his dear friends (1930s)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Old as hell prompt response, but one of the best things I've ever written about Huey.

When all’s said and done, he thinks of Elmer more often than he thinks of Monica. It’s a conscious decision. He has hollowed out all his thoughts of Monica, abstracting them until she is simply a goal: a target that (he has to believe) he grows ever-closer to reaching. He knows that this is despicable. He knows that somewhere, sealed behind deliberate walls, there is a shattered twenty-year-old boy who cries out against regarding her that way. He knows this, but rarely does he need to engage with it. Instead he notes, as pure fact, that he loved her and that he is determined to see her again. All other thoughts are superfluous. His pain can’t be reasoned with, which is why the walls are there in the first place.

Thoughts of Elmer are safer. Guarded and guided by Elmer’s promise to remain unchanging, he can access his memories of the happiest time of his life and observe them. He can project Elmer into the present or the future and remember that there are ways to be entertained, to be content, to be truly comfortable in this world. He can smile, even in a world without—

(no. thoughts of Elmer are safer, but some of them still have their traps.)

 

He has perfected the art of speaking sincerely about himself without caring. He told Victor that Elmer was his north star, because what can a guinea pig do with such information? It _is_ the truth: Elmer is his north star. Elmer is his lifeline to the past, to the heart he left behind. And if all that awaits him when he returns is the pain that he keeps locked up behind those walls—

then at least he can know that Elmer won’t let him rest until he’s able to smile again.


End file.
